


Drawn to You

by my_mad_fatuation



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 11:31:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15023642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_mad_fatuation/pseuds/my_mad_fatuation
Summary: He’s digital, she’s analog. Can these two illustrators find some common ground?





	Drawn to You

Finn was pleasantly surprised to see his good friend and fellow illustrator, Chop, setting up at the table next to his when he arrived at the London Illustration Arts Festival.

“All right, Finn?” said Chop. “How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in ages. I would have thought you’d fallen off the face of the planet if it weren’t for you occasionally posting to Instagram.”

“Yeah, I’ve just been working nonstop lately,” said Finn as he set the box he was holding down onto his assigned table. “Lots of commissions. Not a lot of time for socializing.”

“No worries, mate, it’s just good to see ya.”

“What have you been up to, then?”

“Just working on my next graphic novel,” said Chop. “It’s supposed to come out in the summer, so I’ve been busting my ass on that.”

Finn nodded in understanding and began to lay out his own books and zines and art prints for sale on his table. “You doing any talks or panels this weekend?” he asked his friend.

“Nah, I’m just here to sell stuff and see my old pals,” said Chop, slapping Finn on the shoulder. “You?”

“I’m on a panel this afternoon,” said Finn. “About digital versus analog illustration tools.”

“I can guess which one you’re in favour of. You wouldn’t know what a pen nib looked like if it weren’t for the Pen Tool icon.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Who else is gonna be there?”

“I know Archie is also on the panel—he’s obviously going to talk about the mixed media route. But I don’t know the third person.”

“Well, it sounds like it should be interesting,” said Chop. “I’ll see if I can make it.”

They both turned their heads when they heard a noise. The doors had opened and a small crowd of babbling people started filing in.

“Is it ten already?” Finn asked, taking his phone out of his pocket to check the time. “I need to finish setting up; there’s still another box in my car.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Chop. “I’ll take care of setting up this stuff here, you just go get the other box.”

“Cheers, mate. I’ll only be a minute.”

When Finn left, he made his way through the light stream of people entering the building to get to his car. He retrieved his final box of merchandise and returned to his table shortly. Chop was still there, but so was a woman who was examining some of the items on the table.

“Did you make these?” she asked him.

“Er, no, I—”

“I did,” said Finn when he got there, setting down the box behind the table.

“You’re Finn Nelson, then?”

“Yes…” He couldn’t help but feel like he was being accused of something.

“Oh,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you to be… you.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I just thought that you’d be older, what with the number of years you’ve been working in the industry and all,” she replied. “You must have started when you were—”

“Seventeen,” he cut in. “I got my first commission when I was seventeen.”

She raised her eyebrows like she was impressed. “Well, I’ll definitely be back to buy something once you’re all set up,” she added, gesturing at the disarray on his table, “but I’ve got a lot more booths to check out.”

“Oh, well, thanks for stopping by,” he said. “I promise it will look better than this when you return.”

“I’m counting on it.” She smirked playfully before walking away.

“Who was that, then?” Chop asked Finn once she was out of earshot.

“Er, I dunno,” said Finn. “A fan of my work, I guess.”

“But she was wearing an exhibitor badge.”

“Was she? I didn’t even notice.”

“In any case, she was defo coming on to you,” Chop added.

“Yeah, right.”

“I mean it! You’ll see when she comes back.”

“ _If_ she comes back.”

“Oh, you’ll be seeing her again soon. Just you wait.”

***

But Finn didn’t see the mystery woman again until he got to the conference room for his panel that afternoon and found her sitting up at the front, getting fitted with a lavalier microphone. She appeared to spot him as he walked in, and he felt nervous all of a sudden.

“Hiya, Finn,” she said with a small wave.

He headed towards her. “Hey, er…”

“Rae,” she added. “I’m Rae.”

“Hi, Rae,” he said uncertainly. “I didn’t realize you were on this panel, too. Or, actually, I didn’t even realize you were an illustrator until Chop pointed out that you were wearing a badge, and so I’m sorry if I was a bit abrupt with you earlier, but—”

“It’s fine. My visit to your booth was purely as a fan of your work. I wasn’t scoping out the competition or anything.”

“I didn’t think that you were,” he replied. “…Now I do, though.”

“You know,” she said as he was directed to his seat by one of the event volunteers, “I was so thrilled when I found out you were going to be on this panel, too.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Absolutely. I’m dying to know your take on traditional media, as someone who so famously sticks to digital illustration. Like, do you keep an analog sketchbook? Do you do any preliminary work with pencil and paper? And what about texture? Do you ever feel like you’re missing something by opting out of the imperfect texture of real paper? And what about—”

“Whoa, there,” he said. “You might want to save some questions for the panel discussion, right?”

“Heh, right, sorry,” she replied. “I just get a little carried away when it comes to this sort of thing.”

He leaned towards her. “To be honest, I don’t even think I can answer all your questions. I just don’t give that much thought to it. Or to anything.”

She laughed a little.

“What about you, then? Digital or analog?” he asked her.

“Oh, analog all the way,” she said. “Those Wacom tablet things freak me out, and the iPad Pro? Forget it. I don’t even have a scanner.”

“Do you not upload your work anywhere?”

“No, I do, I just take photos of it with my phone.” She smiled sheepishly. “I know that’s bad, but I just don’t care.”

“Okay, but—” Finn was interrupted as the third panelist took a seat between the two of them.

“Hi, Finn,” he said as he patted Finn on the shoulder, and then turned towards Rae and added, “And Rae, it’s good to see you again.”

“You, too, Archie,” she replied.

Finn leaned forward in his seat. “You two know each other?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Archie. “We met here years ago, just as patrons, and have been Facebook friends ever since.”

“All right, then,” the panel moderator said as she approached and took her seat at the far end of the row. “Let’s get this show going, shall we?”

***

“We live in a digital age,” Finn said emphatically, “and people want images that will scale—for posters and logos and such—and even if you scan at an incredibly high resolution, there’s a limit to how much you can scale an analog illustration. Vectors, on the other hand—”

“Oh, here we go again!” said Rae. “Can’t you put aside your hard-on for vectors for one second and just admit that there are some things you can do with traditional media—or even mixed media—that you just can’t do with vectors? Like the texture and—”

“You can create texture with vectors,” he argued.

“At the cost of a huge file size,” Archie added, and Finn shot him a look that said, “Not helping.”

“I’m just saying,” Rae continued, “I like the look of real pencil, real ink, real paint, and all their unpredictable imperfections that are just so much harder to replicate digitally.”

“Fine,” said Finn. “If those are your aesthetic preferences, then I can see how traditional media would appeal to you. But I’d like to think that, while there may be less unpredictability to the texture of my work, it’s far from just being flat vector shapes.”

“I never said—”

“Sorry to interrupt this lively debate,” said the panel moderator, “but our time is up and they need to start preparing the room for the next event.

“I’d like to thank the three of you for being here today and sharing your thoughts on this subject, and thanks to all of you who attended and asked some brilliant questions. This has definitely been one of the more interesting panels that I’ve moderated.”

“Thank you for having us,” Rae said to her with a nod. She glanced over at Finn for a moment and he felt slightly embarrassed. “It was quite fun.”

***

“What is it that you have against vectors, anyway?”

Rae looked up from her drink like she was momentarily perplexed, and then smiled. “Honestly, I’m an old granny and computers scare me.”

“Seriously?” Finn asked as he sat down next to her.

“Yes,” she replied. “I’m ninety-three years old and it is currently past my bedtime.”

“I meant are you really scared of computers?”

“I’m fine with some things, like word processors, and I’m an Excel wizard,” she said. “But Photoshop still mystifies me, and don’t even get me started on Illustrator.”

“You’re an Excel wizard?”

“It’s part of my ‘real’ job. I don’t want to talk about it.”

He chuckled. “Are you enjoying the after party so far?”

“It was kind of boring until a minute ago,” she said.

“What happened a minute ago?” he asked, looking around the room to see what was going on.

“Someone actually deigned to speak to me, finally.”

He looked back at her. “Why haven’t you tried talking to anyone, yourself?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know anyone here. I don’t have any friends in the industry, except Archie, and he had to leave early to catch his train.”

“So? The point of this sort of event is to get to know people. Mingle. Network.”

“I’m not really on the same level, though, am I?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t make a living by being an illustrator,” she said. “I have a boring job. I’ve never been commissioned to draw anything. I make a measly few pounds a month selling my prints on Etsy, and a few more with Patreon, and that’s it.”

“And you think that means you’re not on the same level as the other people here?”

She nodded somberly.

“Rae, lots of people here don’t do this for a living. And you’re not beneath anyone.”

She returned her attention to her beverage in hand and smiled sadly. “Thanks, but I still feel inferior. And a little embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed?”

“Well, you know, because I had the audacity to argue with _the_ Finn Nelson about the best media for illustration,” she said.

“You make it sound like I’m some sort of legend,” he replied with a laugh.

“You practically are. I mean, I’ve been following you on Instagram for years, and you didn’t even know I existed.”

“I’ll follow you back,” he said as he grabbed his phone out of his pocket. “What’s your username?”

She shook her head, but laughed a little as well. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just sorry I never got a chance to come back to your booth and buy any of your prints.”

“Forget it, I’ll give you one for free, if you like,” he said. “I already took all my stuff home before the party, but if you’re local, I could—”

“It’s fine. I’ll just wait until next year.”

“Do you have a pen?”

“A pen?”

“And some paper? Anything to draw on?” he asked.

“I carry a sketchbook everywhere, if that’s what you mean…”

“Great, can I see it for a second?”

“Er, I suppose…” she said, though she appeared confused as she pulled a small Moleskine sketchbook out of her bag along with a pencil. “I haven’t got a pen on me, though.”

“This’ll do.” He took the pencil and sketchbook from her and opened it to a blank page.

“What are you—”

“A-ta-ta-ta!” he said, holding up the pencil in request for silence. “Hold on a minute.”

He angled himself away from her so that she wouldn’t be able to see what he was doing as he scribbled in the sketchbook for a couple of minutes. Once he had finished, he handed it back to her. She looked rather relieved to have it returned, as though being apart from her sketchbook for any length of time caused her anxiety.

She immediately flipped through it until she found the page he had drawn on. It was a quick portrait sketch of her, which he had signed.

“There, now you have a Finn Nelson original, on _paper_ and everything,” he said.

“So you can draw with a real pencil after all,” she said with a small smirk as she continued examining the sketch. “Though, I have to say, this is a really good likeness considering you were turned away from me as you drew it.”

He bit his lip sheepishly. “I’ll admit that I may have spent an inordinate amount of time looking at you, relative to how long we’ve actually been talking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This is going to sound creepy, but I was watching you before I came over.”

“You were watching me?” she asked. “Why?”

“Because you’re nice to look at, all right?” he said. “And it took me a long time to come up with an opening line so I could start talking to you…”

“So you chose to open with yet another debate about vectors?”

“Yes.”

His bluntness seemed to make her laugh, but then she set down her drink and packed up her sketchbook.

“I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable,” he added.

“No, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s just that I ought to get going now; like I said, I’m a granny.”

“Would you like me to walk you to the tube or anything?”

“No, no, it’s fine. My boyfriend’s meeting me outside.”

“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t know—”

“I’ll see you next year, all right?” Rae said as she stood up and offered to shake Finn’s hand.

“Yeah… See you…”

***

_“I didn’t notice until I got home that you left your number on the back of the sketch you drew for me. Very clever.”_

Finn looked at the text message on his phone and smiled. _“I am the master of deception,”_ he replied. _“What are you doing today?”_

_“Nothing. Why?”_

_“Are you in London? We could grab a coffee or something.”_

_“You remember the part where I have a boyfriend, right?”_

_“And he doesn’t allow you to drink coffee?”_

It was several minutes before she responded. _“Where were you thinking?”_

***

They met at one of Finn’s favourite little cafés near Covent Garden an hour later.

“This is nice,” said Rae as she looked out the front window that was lined with flower boxes. “I’ve never been here before, though I’m in the neighbourhood quite often.”

“You are?” Finn asked as he waited for his beverage to cool enough to drink it.

“The London Graphic Centre is close by,” she said. “You would know that if you ever actually bought physical art supplies.”

He smiled, as though he wanted to say something but chose not to.

“I’m glad you suggested this place, though,” she added. “Now I have an excuse to stop by the store on my way home—not that I ever need an excuse to go shopping for art supplies, of course. It’s sort of an addiction.”

“I get it,” he said.

“Yeah, right. When I want to use a new colour, I have to go buy a new marker—you just have to click a different colour swatch.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that you can’t understand the joy and excitement of buying new art supplies because you don’t use any,” she said.

“Okay…”

“What?”

“That’s just fairly presumptuous of you.”

“Am I wrong?”

He continued smiling at her for a moment before asking, “How much time do you have?”

“Is this a long story?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “If you’re in a rush, it can wait, but if not then I have something to show you when we’re done here.”

“Something to show me?” she asked, raising one eyebrow. “I’m intrigued.”

“Drink up, then.”

***

“Jeez, there are still used record shops?” Rae said when they stopped in front of one such storefront. “Is that what you wanted to show me? The last remaining vestige of a bygone era?”

Finn laughed a little. “No, this is just where my flat is,” he said, taking out his key to unlock the small door next to the shop.

“Oh.”

He led her inside and up the stairs to the flat he shared with one other guy, who wasn’t home at the time.

“You don’t live alone?” she asked.

“In London? Who can afford it?”

“But you’re, like, the big time.”

“I don’t know about that…” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“This is all a bit disillusioning, to be honest,” she said as she looked around.

“Okay, great, but that’s not what I wanted to show you.” He extended his arm toward his open bedroom door.

“Er, Finn, I still have a boyfriend, so—”

“That’s not what I wanted to show you either!” he added, and dropped his arm with a laugh. “Just go on.”

He let her go ahead of him so she could take in the sights for herself.

“Who painted all of these?” she asked, looking around at all of the watercolour illustrations pinned to the walls.

“I did…” he replied sheepishly.

She turned back and frowned at him. “You paint?”

“A little.”

“But when— How did— What about scalability?”

He laughed. “What?”

“You were digital all the way, at the festival,” she said. “Why didn’t you mention _this_?”

“ _This_ isn’t my profession,” he explained. “It’s just a hobby. They don’t need to scale for print or anything because they’re never going to be sold.”

“You could, though,” she added as she scanned the walls again.

“Could what?”

“Sell these. I’d buy one, in a heartbeat.”

“Take one.”

She scoffed. “I can’t _take_ one.”

“Why not?”

“Do you realize how valuable these will be once you’re dead?”

“But what good is that value to me if I’m dead?” he said with a smirk.

“You know what I mean. They’re worth something.”

“If you think they’re worth something then you should take one, and sell it once I’m dead,” he teased.

“I couldn’t…” She continued looking around until her eyes landed on a painting of a young woman that vaguely resembled her.

“Er, that’s a character study for a story that a friend of mine wants me to illustrate,” he said quickly.

“Oh, I thought for a second— It doesn’t matter.”

“It is, though.”

She looked at him again. “It is what?”

“Based on you, I guess.” He chewed on the inside of his lip nervously as he waited for her to respond. “I’m sorry if that’s weird,” he added when she didn’t say anything.

“No, actually, I think it’s kind of cool,” she said, looking back at the painting. “Nobody’s ever drawn me before—well, except for you.”

“Making me sound a bit like a stalker, now, thanks.”

“If anything, I’m your stalker. I’ve been following your work online for years, remember?”

“And now you know where I live…”

“Exactly.”

“So when you said these would be valuable once I’m dead, you meant soon, didn’t you?”

“Ah, busted.”

They both laughed for a moment, but the laughter soon turned to awkward silence.

“Anyway, I should probably…” she added, motioning towards the door.

“Yeah, okay…”

“But, erm, we should hang out again some time.”

He smiled at her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Like, we could meet up for a drawing date.”

“A date, huh?”

“A _drawing_ date. We set up at a coffee shop with our sketchbooks and draw together for a couple hours. I used to do that all the time with Archie before he moved.”

“Yeah, okay, that sounds good.”

“Good.” She smiled back at him. “I’ll text you.”

***

It was nearly a couple of weeks before Finn heard from Rae, by which point he had already given up hope of seeing her again. He figured her suggestion of doing “drawing dates” together was just one of those empty gestures you said to someone out of courtesy, but had no intention of following through on it. But twelve days after showing her his watercolours, Rae texted Finn to ask him to go on one of said drawing dates with her.

They met up at the same café as last time, and Rae arrived with a fresh looking bag of goodies from the London Graphic Centre that he assumed she’d just purchased on her way over. When they got set up at a table—quite a large one, for just the two of them—she dumped out her purchases and started arranging them in an ordered-yet-haphazard way.

“What are you doing?” he asked her, slightly amused by her behaviour.

“I’m posting my haul to Instagram,” she said as she got her phone out to start taking photos of the array.

“Why?”

She looked up at him, a bit puzzled. “I always do this sort of thing,” she said. “People love seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff. You would know that if you ever posted anything other than a perfected final image of something.”

“You mean they like seeing the rough sketches and the materials used to create them?”

“Yes!”

“And that’s interesting for them?”

“Is that sort of thing interesting for you?”

“Well, yeah, I guess,” he said, “but I’m an illustrator. It makes sense for it to interest me.”

“So are a lot of your fans,” she told him.

His brow furrowed as he pondered this revelation. A lot of his fans, like Rae, were also illustrators. They weren’t necessarily professionals, but were at least interested in the process of illustrating as much as they were interested in the final product itself. “I’d never thought of that,” he said.

“You should try it some time,” she added. “Post some of your works in progress, or better yet, post some of your watercolours. Just to mix it up.”

“I might just do that…” He picked his phone up off the table and took a photo of Rae taking a photo of her art supplies. “How about a behind-the-scenes of your behind-the-scenes?”

She looked up at him and scowled, but it also seemed like she was trying not to laugh. Then she lifted her phone so she could take a photo of him taking a photo of her, and they both broke into laughter.

“Okay, okay,” she said, lowering her phone. “We should probably get some work done, otherwise this afternoon will be a total waste of time.”

Finn set down his phone as well and took his iPad Pro out of the bag he had slung over the back of his chair. “To answer your question about whether or not I use an analog sketchbook: I don’t,” he said to her with a smirk as she eyed his device warily.

“I don’t get how you can draw on something like that,” she replied with distaste. “The surface looks too slick.”

“I actually put a protective cover on the surface that gives it a bit of grip, more like the texture of paper. You should try it.”

Rae scoffed.

“I mean it,” he said. “Look, I know you’re really excited to start drawing with your new markers and stuff, but what if, for this afternoon, we swap?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you take the iPad and draw with it, and I take your sketchbook and drawing materials and draw with those.”

“You… want to draw in my sketchbook?” she asked, clutching it to her chest.

He laughed and said, “I already have, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I’m not going to deface anything, I just haven’t tried Copic markers in a while and it might be a good opportunity for me to give it a go,” he added. “Besides, I’m betting you haven’t given digital a fair chance, have you?”

“Maybe not…” she said, slowly lowering her sketchbook back down to the table.

“And you never know; perhaps this will rid me of my ‘hard-on for vectors,’ as you so charmingly put it.”

She covered part of her face with her hand. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry about that. I just got kind of carried away and swept up in the discussion and—”

“Don’t worry about it. I thought it was funny.”

“Still, I can’t believe I said that, and in front of a room full of people, too.”

He shrugged. “They also seemed to think it was funny. Anyway,” he went on, “I’ll set you up here with a drawing app. It’s not vector drawing, so you don’t have to be afraid of it. It’s just like drawing with a pen. Almost.”

Hesitantly, Rae took Finn’s tablet and set it down in front of her, after pushing her drawing supplies aside. “If you say so.”

***

Finn met up with Rae once a week or so for a couple months to do their drawing dates. Most of the time they would each stick to their preferred artistic media—Finn would draw on his tablet or occasionally bring water-brushes to do some painting at the café, and Rae would scribble furiously in her sketchbook—but occasionally they would switch. It was making Finn remember how much he used to enjoy drawing with pencil and pen as a youth.

“So, what’s new in your life lately?” he asked Rae as he started roughly sketching out a portrait of a man with a large moustache who was seated a few tables over. “Did that horrible woman you work with ever get fired?”

“Nah,” said Rae. “She’s been there longer than I have, so she’d probably have to shit on the manager’s desk in order to get fired, or something.”

Finn chuckled without looking up from his sketch except to check on his subject from time to time.

“As for what’s new with me, well, er, I sort of… broke up with my boyfriend over the weekend,” Rae added quietly.

“What?” he said, finally stopping to look at her.

“I mean, not that you need to care or anything, just that’s something new that happened with me so I thought—”

“Hey, come on, I care.”

“You do?”

“You’re my friend, right? So, yeah, I care that you’ve just had a breakup.”

“I didn’t, erm, realize we were… friends,” she said.

“What would you say we are, then?” he replied with a frown.

“I dunno… Acquaintances?”

He wasn’t sure why he felt a little crushed by her words, but added, “I suppose if that’s how you see it, then…” He looked back down at the portrait he’d been working on and closed the sketchbook.

“What are you doing that for?” she asked when he handed it back to her.

“It just seems weird for me to keep drawing in your sketchbook if we aren’t friends,” he said.

“I didn’t mean—I just meant that we’re not the sort of friends who need to give too much of a shit about each other, that’s all,” she said.

“Well, I guess I give too much of a shit, then,” he muttered before turning his attention back towards the man with the moustache, who was now attempting to drink his cappuccino without getting foam in said moustache.

“Come on—”

“Why even tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“That you’d broken up. Why even tell me, if I’m not supposed to give a shit?” said Finn.

“You asked me what was new in my life.”

“Yeah, because I thought we were friends.”

“Fine, we can be friends, then,” said Rae. “If it means that much to you.”

“Obviously it doesn’t mean much to you.”

“What do you want me to say? This past couple of months has just been…”

“Has just been…?”

“Complicated,” she said with a sigh.

“With your boyfriend?” he asked.

“With… everything,” she replied. “I’ve been trying to focus more on my art lately—honestly, my creative inspiration is thriving because of our drawing dates—but he just… didn’t get that.”

“He didn’t want you to focus on your art?” Finn asked, a little confused.

“He just didn’t like that I was spending so much time on a _hobby_ ,” said Rae, looking down at the table. “Or that I was spending so much time with…” She glanced up at him for a second.

“With me?” he said.

She nodded slightly.

“But… we only see each other, like, once a week.”

“Yeah, but I told him how you, erm, did that painting of me and he seems to think… that you fancy me,” she said.

“Well… yeah.”

“What?”

“I do. Fancy you, I mean,” said Finn. “I thought that was obvious.”

“I mean… I guess I kinda wondered,” she said. “But you never said anything, so—”

“You had a boyfriend; I was trying not to interfere and make things weird.”

“Well, you did.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t—I knew he was the type to get jealous, so I shouldn’t have been hanging out with you anyway, but…”

“That is some red flag nonsense, right there.”

“I suppose…”

“Look, Rae, I’m really sorry you have to go through this, but it sounds like it’s for the best,” he added.

“I’m not, er, not ready to date again just yet, though,” she replied, looking away.

“Oh, I didn’t mean—”

“Sorry, it’s just—”

“No, I was only—”

“I thought you were trying to—”

“I wasn’t—I would never ask you—”

“Never? Okay. Good to know.” Rae lowered her gaze and slumped in her chair.

“Wait, are you mad because you thought I was trying to ask you out, or because I wasn’t?” said Finn.

“I’m not mad at all,” she replied, avoiding eye contact.

“All right, but you won’t look at me, so…”

She glanced at him and then started packing up her things. “I should probably go; I’ve got a lot of work to do at home.”

“Same time next week, then?” he asked.

“Uh, sure.” She stood up and grabbed her bag. “Next week.”

***

Finn didn’t see Rae the following week. She sent him a text asking to reschedule their drawing date because she “had a lot to do” that day, without getting any more specific than that. He assumed she was avoiding him, after the awkwardness of last week, but he figured he ought to let her be, and that soon things would go back to normal.

But they never did.

“What brings you here?” he asked when Rae showed up at his flat unannounced several weeks later.

“I, er, wanted to say hi,” she replied sheepishly, standing in his doorway.

“I haven’t heard from you in three weeks, and you show up just to say hi?”

“Well, that, and it is your fault,” she added.

“What’s my fault?”

“My boyfriend wasn’t irrationally jealous of me hanging out with you.”

“No?”

“What I mean is that he wasn’t wrong to be jealous,” she said.

“Rae, I told you,” he said, “I would never—”

“But I would,” she said. “I… I realized that I liked you more than I liked him. So I broke up with him. Because of you.”

Finn frowned at her sympathetically. “I’m sorry that I caused such an upheaval in your life; it wasn’t my intention, and—”

“Just shut up for a second!” she cut in. “I’m trying to tell you that I… I mean, you said before that you fancied me, and well, I suppose I fancy you, too, is what I’m trying to say.”

“O…kay…” he said slowly.

“I just needed some time to sort that out in my mind, though.”

“I see.”

“But now that I have, I was wondering… Do you want to go on a date with me?”

“Like a drawing date?” he asked with a smirk.

“Like a real date,” she said.

“Are you busy?”

“Now?”

He smiled a little. “Yeah, now.”

“I… can move some things around, I suppose.”

“How about we ditch our sketchbooks for a while and just go get a drink, then?”

She smiled back. “Sounds good.”

Finn grabbed his wallet and keys from the small table next to the door and shoved them in his pocket before stepping out onto the landing with Rae. “Maybe while we’re out,” he added as he shut the door behind them, “I can convince you to get a Wacom.”

“We’ll see about that.”


End file.
